Quick on the heels of the PCManFM update late last week, PCMan has updated the lxpanel and lxsession components of the LXDE desktop suite.

I built fresh versions of those two, for use on my OLPC machine running Arch. I liked messing with IceWM, and I actually find some parts of it to be easier or more convenient than Openbox. This is something I want to try though, and see if it handles well at 430Mhz.

Differences in the two programs might be only superficial to you; to be honest I couldn’t get lxsession to compile, but that’s not much of an issue for me since I rarely used lxsession. The panel updates are welcome though.

Probably coolest (for me, anyway) is the ability to use a background image along the panel now, which means highlights or glazed effects are an option.

Like I’ve said elsewhere, if you use an older machine and want a panel, lxpanel is a great option. Add to that the slim efficiency of programs like PCManFM and GPicView, and round it all off with lxsession, and for my money’s worth, it’s a great suite.

Discussion here, along with an automatic installation script for Ubuntu. Bonus! 😯